Will Weatherhelm: The Yarn of an Old Sailor

by William Henry Giles Kingston

Away she flew, close-hauled though, with the foam dancing round her, and already at some distance. “And is this to be my fate?” I thought; “to die thus a victim to the foul revenge of that man?”

I resolved to struggle for life. I looked round me on every side. The Indiamen were scattered far and wide, none of them were coming up on our track. Still I swam on, but I felt how hopeless was the struggle.

Just then my eye fell on a grating, floating not five fathoms from me, and which had evidently been thrown to me by some one on board, when I was seen to fall from aloft. I exerted all my strength, and at length reached it. The time appeared to be very long. It is impossible, on such occasions, to measure it. Moments appeared minutes—minutes hours. I threw myself on the grating in a position to avoid being washed off it or thrown under it; but it required no slight exertion to hold on. As the dark seas came rolling up, and breaking, with a loud, crashing sound, above my head, I felt as if they must inevitably overwhelm me. Still I did not give up hope.

Unhappy as I had thought myself, I desired life that I might return home once more and ascertain the fate of my wife. I prayed that for this object I might be preserved; that we might once more be united, and once again be happy on earth. Even at that moment, surrounded by the boiling seas, with my ship flying fast away from me, I pictured, with all the vividness of reality, the unspeakable joy of once again being restored to her. I remembered the numberless dangers to which I had been exposed, and the merciful way in which I had been preserved from them.

Not for an instant did I think of Iffley. I forgot that he had been the cause of my present position, and thus I was prevented from harbouring any feeling of revenge against him.

As I was saying, I could not judge how long I was clinging to the grating. Tossed about as I was—now lifted to the summit of a foaming sea—now sinking down into the trough—I kept my eye constantly turning towards my ship.

Suddenly I saw the fore-topsail thrown aback—a boat was lowered—my shipmates were coming to my rescue. I felt even then that I was to be saved. I forgot the distance they had to pull and the heavy sea which might both endanger them and hide me from their sight. Still more eagerly did I try to make out the boat, as she laboured among the foaming seas. I caught a glimpse of her as I rose to the top of a wave, but she was not pulling towards me. Those in her could not have seen me.

Then suddenly the horrid thought came across me, that Iffley might have pretended to have seen where I was and to have guided the boat wrongly. Then I blamed myself for thinking even Iffley capable of an act so atrocious. Still, I thought if he had purposely thrown me into the sea, he would be as likely to play the foul trick of which I now suspected him.

Again I sank down into a deep trough of the sea, and could only for a time distinguish the topsails of the ship above the masses of foam which flew around. When I next rose again, there was the boat pulling away from me.

I shrieked out, I raised my voice louder and louder, as if I could by possibility be heard. I might as well have tried to howl down the hurricane in its fiercest mood. This was more trying than all that had gone before.